Study: Sex does not induce labor

I don’t care that a new study from the University of Malaya in Malaysia says that sex doesn’t necessarily induce labor, I still swear by it.

The method has long been a traditionally known mans for triggering labor for women who are far along in their pregnancies and maybe even past their due date and anxious to get the show on the road.

However, the University of Malayastudy found no differences in the timing of delivery between women who had sex near term and those who abstained, the Daily Mail reported.

“We are a little disappointed that we did not find an association,” the paper quoted author Dr Tan Peng Chiong as saying.

However, the team said having sex is usually perfectly safe before the woman’s waters have broken.

Few studies have tackled the theory before. It has been thought that semen contains a hormone-like substance called prostaglandin, which when used in synthetic form could induce labor. Also, orgasms during sex could trigger uterine contractions as well.

However, few studies have ever investigated whether sex really can start the birthing process and the small amount of existing evidence has been inconclusive.

In the latest study, published in the journal BJOG, the team set out to see whether advising women to have sex during the final weeks of pregnancy could help them avoid an induction.

The researchers invited more than 1,100 women to participate, all of whom were 35 to 38 weeks pregnant (the typical pregnancy lasts 40 weeks) and none of whom had had sex in the previous six weeks.

Roughly half of the women were advised by a doctor to have sex frequently as a means of safely expediting labor The other half were told that sex was safe during pregnancy, but that its effects on labor were unknown.

It was found that women in both groups had inductions at the same rate, about 22% and both groups went until about 39 weeks. Well, one should wait arguable until 40 weeks anyway.

Nonetheless, it worked for me and many of the women who commented on the Daily Mail piece so, I’d say the jury is still out.

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